Well-Designed Low-Income Housing Is Possible

This story is part of our annual look at the state of American design. This year, we’re highlighting work that shines through an acrimonious moment—and makes the case for optimism.

This summer, while most Americans were focused on the big-picture politics of the election, a small but consequential political event transpired in Washington. On the Senate floor, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act—which had passed the House of Representatives with an overwhelming bipartisan majority—was blocked during an August 1 procedural vote. As reported by Politico, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, blamed the failure on "Senate Republicans [who] decided they’d rather wait around and hope Trump wins" than take action now.

The bill’s death, like so many others’, was a quiet one, barely noted in the media. But its repercussions may be very audible. Across the nation, cities and counties struggle to build adequate housing for working people. The now-defunct tax bill contained provisions that would have supercharged the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC), the federal subsidy that since 1986 has constituted the primary mechanism for privately built, low-cost development in America. The success of that program—always a contentious one and limited in impact—now hangs in the balance, along with a path forward for the housing movement.

In the meantime, designers and builders are intent on showing how much can be done with the means now available and what might be possible with more and better tools in the future. Architects are expanding the visual language of LIHTC-sponsored housing. Case in point: the Atrium at Sumner, a new 190-unit senior and supportive project in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. "These building typologies are often very limited," says architect Daniel Libeskind. "But you can turn them around." Renowned for his Jewish Museum in Berlin and the master plan for Manhattan’s rebuilt World Trade Center, Libeskind is a relative newcomer to the affordability field, having only recently completed his first such project, on Long Island. The LIHTC development process—which requires builders to meet special benchmarks to qualify for partial reimbursement at tax time—was daunting, though the team at Studio Libeskind viewed it as an opportunity to do more with less. "You can work within the budget and all the limitations and still produce something that has dignity," says the architect.

Atrium manages to do just that, breaking the mold for affordable housing in more ways than one. While 50 percent of its $132 million budget was covered through the federal LIHTC reimbursement, the team behind the project was able to realize huge upfront savings by building on the vacant green space surrounding an existing public housing project, the 1958 Sumner Houses. Usually stymied by bureaucratic and political considerations, this economical maneuver has the added advantage of highlighting just how much Studio Libeskind’s design solution differs from the outdated 20th-century housing type next door: In contrast with the blocky brick towers of Sumner, Atrium is a sharp, irregularly shaped meteorite of a building, with exterior planes that jut and recede at odd angles. Even more striking is its eponymous central feature, a mezzanine courtyard that allows the building’s interior to "glow with radiance and joy," as Libeskind describes it, marking a more definitive break with the low-cost housing of yesteryear.